Turbines meant to help environment may hurt local wildlife species

Published: Sunday, July 19, 2009

JOSHUA HULL

The landscape of West Texas is changing.

Standing hundreds of feet tall, like alien structures on the featureless plains, fields of shining white towers have sprung up seemingly overnight to harness formidable winds known all too well by those who have made the land home.

Call it what you will - alternative energy, a green solution, renewable resources - one thing is certain: like the oil booms of yesteryear, wind harnessing is sweeping across the Plains with the promise of a new tomorrow for the U.S. energy market.

Similar to transformations brought by oil and agricultural industries in past decades, the industry's impact is more than skin deep. Some researchers have found going green through a new generation of windmills may not be what's best for the environment.

"There's almost no understanding of the environmental impact of these wind turbines," said Ronald Kendall, director of Texas Tech's Institute of Environmental and Human Health. "I'm all for alternative energy, but I'm for getting it right."

Kendall and his colleagues have been looking past the benefits of pollution-free energy and focusing on how the industry will harm the region's oldest natives: its wildlife.

The spinning blades - many of which are more than 100 feet in length - present a unique challenge for birds and bats, and the

mere presence of the mammoth towers could disrupt one the area's most threatened inhabitants, the lesser prairie chicken.

"If an agricultural pesticide killed as many birds as these turbines probably are, they'd be regulated right out of the market," Kendall said, adding one report in Canada found a single turbine could kill more than 100 birds a night. "Why don't we get ahead of the curve for once?"

And it's not just the turbines that have researchers worried.

Lack of infrastructure on the High Plains means hundreds of thousands of miles of transmission lines will have to go up to accommodate the energy as it's harnessed. Planned lines will crisscross the Panhandle so the power can be transferred to larger markets like Dallas and Houston.

Turbines may catch bats and birds in their spinning rotors, but the transmission lines pose the biggest threat for the struggling population of lesser prairie chickens, a problem Texas Parks and Wildlife officials fear would hurt the species.

An inherent fear of tall, vertical structures keep nesting hens away from turbines and power lines, said Heather Whitlaw, a wildlife diversity specialist with the Lubbock division of Parks and Wildlife.

As new lines cut across areas where approximately 6,500 remaining birds are known to breed, the likelihood of those groups successfully producing a good number of offspring diminishes, she said.

"We have taken the slow decline into a really steep one because we're not recruiting chicks and we're not recruiting chicks because we've forced them into (inadequate) habitat," Whitlaw said. "Eventually, it's too much."

Many companies are working with Parks and Wildlife to minimize their impact on the local ecology, but as the lesser prairie chicken grows closer to reaching the threatened list - something Whitlaw expects will happen within two years - time is running out for companies to find a balance, she said.

The prairie chicken was recently elevated to a No. 2 spot as a candidate for the Endangered Species Act list. If the population continues to decrease at the current rate, Whitlaw said federal authorities could soon be in charge of conservation efforts, bringing massive changes at wind companies' expense.

"There are no regulations, there are no guidelines, there's nothing that tells them they have to do anything," she said of the current situation. "Wait until you talk about five states with farming and ranching and wind energy with heavy restrictions. We've never seen the likes of it."

Wind energy advocates have acknowledged problems exist on a small scale, and say new technology and careful planning can help eliminate many of the concerns.

"I think in the area of birds in general, wind is just a very small part of human-related avian deaths," said Tom Gray, director of communications with the American Wind Energy Association. "There are statistics out there that indicate a billion birds a year are killed by house cats. If we got all our electricity from wind, we wouldn't even be near that."

Consultants routinely go to proposed wind farm sites to try to minimize the potential harm; some areas want to utilize sonic devices to repel bats and birds, he said.

Gray believes the environmental benefits of wind energy far outweigh the consequences, and says the industry is dedicated to reducing any negative aspects.

Even if wind energy companies do address ecological concerns, wind farm expansion would bring enormous changes to the High Plains landscape.

Each turbine requires close to 80 acres of clearance for safety concerns, and a mid-size wind farms contains at least 100 turbines, said Glenn Patton, director of development at the American Wind Power Center.

A supporter of the growing industry, Patton said he believes West Texans are willing to overlook possible environmental downsides for the promise of a bright financial future.

"I guarantee you there are probably more birds killed by cars on the highway than by a wind turbine," he said.

For Kendall, the time to find solutions to the downsides is now, before Texas wildlife is irreversibly damaged by the winds of change.

"There's all kinds of ways we can approach this other than just slapping thousands of these things across the landscape," he said. "Things have changed, whether for the better or not, and the environment is going to be front and center."